Monday, September 22, 2014

Envy Not.

Pro 23:17  Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the LORD all the day long.

We spend way too much time envying sinners.

First all. We do NOT like to call anyone a sinner. Yet there in God's word we are told NOT to let our hearts envy sinners. 

To do that we have to recognize sinners. 

I'm a sinner.  We are all sinners, yes? All of us are in need of forgiveness. And truthfully we should envy NO ONE. Right?  This is truth.

Pro_14:30  A sound heart is the life of the flesh: but envy the rottenness of the bones.

Envy the ROTTENNESS of the bones.

Pro_27:4  Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?

Worse than cruelty and anger is ENVY!

Mar_15:10  For he knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy.

Jesus was delivered to be killed because of ENVY and Pilate knew this. 

Act_13:45  But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy, and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming.

ENVY, the Apostles had to deal with the envy of the Jews.

Tit 3:3  For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.
Tit 3:4  But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared,
Tit 3:5  Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;
Tit 3:6  Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour;
Tit 3:7  That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

We can ONLY hope to be washed, regenerated, renewed by the Holy Spirit and in that hope that our evil sinning traits are done away with. We must be justified by our SAVIOR.

Envying sinners. 

Envying anyone is WRONG.

We cannot judge the sins of others, only God is the judge and can grant eternal life, as He knows the hearts of all. We can look at the lives of others and those in blatant sinning and know God would not have us stealing, lying, hating, murdering, breaking the Sabbath, committing adultery, etc. And still we cannot judge the end of any person.

To envy is to desire something that you don't have, to desire to be someone else, wikipedia says this-

'Envy
Envy is an emotion which "occurs when a person lacks another's superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it" Bertrand Russell said that envy was one of the most potent causes of unhappiness. 


How often do we find ourselves envying?

In the world we live in it has become NORMAL to envy. We taking envying as a means to spur us to get more, to change and we call it good.

It is so incredibly easy to get caught up in envying and it will happen inevitably when we live for this world.

Seriously.

The only way to avoid envy is to live for eternal life, not for this temporary life. We are to put our treasures in heaven- all of them. We need to live for the second coming of our Savior not for this world, this life.

Only by the grace of God is this possible!  Only by His mercy, His love!


More on this tomorrow by the love of our Father, our Savior, and the Holy Spirit.

No comments: